Social Media (part 2)

by Vickie Tolbert on February 7, 2013

Google Alerts

How do you know what is being said about you on the World Wide Web? One good way to find out is to set up a Google Alert.

Set up alerts for your business, your name, key employees’ names, your competitors, and for any other term or phrase you want to keep up with. For instance, I have alerts set for WordPress, social media and privacy since I like to keep up with developments in those subjects. The result of creating an alert is that any mention of you or your business on the web is likely to be found by Google and delivered to you soon after it is posted. See Social Media (part 1) for how to manage any negative mentions you may see.

It is a good policy to have pre-planned responses to questions about your goods and services. Sometimes an angry person may post a very negative view of your business, and your natural response may be an angry reply. This can result in a “flame war”, which doesn’t help the situation at all. A pre-developed response can give time for all parties to cool off before dealing with the issue involved.

Set Social Media Goals

The next step should be to decide the goals for any social media activities and to decide who within your business would oversee your social media program. This Marketwire publication provides a nice overview of the planning process.

As with any other goals, your social media marketing goals should be specific, measurable, and attainable. It is ok to start small. Reviewing the links below may help you determine your priorities and see if social media marketing can benefit your business. Some of the links are simple and some are more advanced. Just look through them and let the general ideas settle in your brain. Then go back to any that seem useful for you. (This advice is from my general plan about how to learn something new: first get some on you!)

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